


Johnny Viti's Wedding

by Telperien



Series: BatCat Week 2018 [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Catwoman (Comics)
Genre: BatCat Week 2018, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 13:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16535120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telperien/pseuds/Telperien
Summary: Bruce thinks they need to come up with a cover story for when people ask how they met. Selina thinks they should tell everyone the truth.BatCat Week 2018, Day One:Beginnings





	Johnny Viti's Wedding

**Author's Note:**

> Happy BatCat Week! 
> 
> The various "first meetings" Bruce and Selina mention come from Batman: Year One, Batman (1940) #1, and Batman: The Long Halloween. The Long Halloween isn't strictly their first meeting (they seem to know each other beforehand), but since there's no reason why they should know each other in that universe, I'm assuming they met at the beginning of the reception and started flirting later in the evening.
> 
> The non-meetings encounters that Bruce briefly mentions are from Catwoman: Year One, Batman: Prey, and Batman: Terror.

They were getting ready for bed on Selina’s first official night as a resident in Wayne Manor when Bruce decided that they were enjoying themselves too much. Obviously, he believed that a tiff was the best way to formalize their new state of domesticity.

“We need to come up with a story,” Bruce said, his breath minty, “for how we met.”

“A story,” Selina repeated.

He nodded.

She was bewildered. Normally Bruce didn’t confuse her, not the way he seemed to confuse everyone else, but this was genuinely one of the more baffling things he’d ever said to her. And that was including the things he’d said to her in bed, which—not to be crude—did on occasion skew to the _unusual_ side of things. “Can’t we just tell people the truth?” she asked.

Bruce stared at her so long she crossed her arms. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing," he said. He stopped mid-step on his way to the bed, then said, "No, not nothing. I can’t believe you seriously want to tell people that we met while I disguised as a drifter and _you_ were a barely legal sex worker who thought I was _assaulting_ your underage friend. Then the two of us started a brawl that spread through all of Crime Alley until the police actually came to the East End—and this was back when Loeb was commissioner!”

Selina scoffed. “That’s not how we met.”

“It very much is.”

It was Selina’s curse to love a literal-minded man. “That might be the first time we… _encountered_ one another, but that isn’t the first time we _met._ I don’t think we exchanged a single word during that whole mess. Mostly, I just beat you up.”

"Holly stabbed me in the thigh, not you."

"We worked together," she said.

Bruce didn’t argue the point, which meant he conceded it. “Alright then,” he said, “we’ll tell everyone that we met when I was Batman and you were disguised as an old woman as part of a ploy to steal Mrs. Travers’s emerald necklace on her yacht. _That_ is a much better story. I can certainly imagine telling my business partners _that_ one. Naturally they will be disturbed to learn that I’ve chosen to dress as a giant bat in pursuit of vigilante justice, and that could hurt Wayne Enterprises’ stocks, but I think confirmation of your criminal origins will make my own sins look lesser in comparison.”

Selina huffed. “You’re being ridiculous. You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Am I? Explain to me how I’m being ridiculous.”

“That’s another _encounter_ , not a real meeting. What did we say to each other before I jumped into the water? I made a couple of jokes, some explicit comments were made, and you recited your usual sentinel of justice spiel. I’m pretty sure you’ve done the same with…” She thought back, trying to remember Batman’s more obscure enemies. “With _Pix._ Do you really think you’ve _met_ her?”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “That’s different, Selina.”

Selina crossed her arms. “How so?”

Obviously he hadn’t thought far enough ahead that he had a ready-made excuse why. He paused to think about it as Selina looked at him expectantly, tapping her foot, before he finally said, “Because… Our current relationship makes all of our past encounters more meaningful. They become meetings in hindsight.”

“Uh-huh.”

Her skepticism made Bruce’s cheeks flush angrily. “What do you consider to be our first meeting, then?” he asked her in his coldest and most businesslike tone. She was in trouble now, and she didn’t care. She had to say something before Bruce kept on listing every single _encounter_ they’d ever had, and they’d had a lot before they properly met—Batman and Catwoman had fought across rooftops, Bruce Wayne had danced with dozens of socialites loaded with other women’s jewels, and once, Selina Kyle had argued with Matches Malone in the Iceberg Lounge.

“We met in the Roman’s penthouse,” she said. It was the most obvious thing in the world, and Selina didn’t understand how such a clever man could miss the obvious solution to their problem.

“As Batman and Catwoman,” Bruce reminded her sharply.

“No! Not… not _that_ meeting. Are you sure you’re not being deliberately obtuse about this, Bruce? Because it really feels like you are.” Selina sighed. “I _meant_ Johnny Viti’s wedding.”

His shoulders fell. “Oh.”

“Yes, _oh._ ”

Bruce had run the numbers already, though. He did love his facts and figures. “We first _encountered_ each other in March, and Johnny Viti married the next June. That’s over a year, Selina. Fifteen months.”

“So?”

“ _So?_ It feels… _insincere_ to gloss over fifteen months of history like that.”

She shook her head. “ _You_ wanted to come up with a lie, mister. What is that except glossing over history? I’m saying we tell the truth, and it _is_ true to say that Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne met at Johnny Viti’s wedding.” She took a second to marvel at the way this conversation had unfolded. “You know, this might be the only time we take those respective sides. This might be the only time I _ever_ argue in favor of the truth, so you’d better savor it, hero.”

“I’m savoring it,” he said dryly.

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“You’ll have to take my word for it.”

Selina applied lotion to her hands and face as Bruce formulated his final argument. Whatever had gotten him so worked up, obviously he needed to work through it before he could share his problem with Selina.

She hated waiting, but sometimes a job needed patience.

“We lie so much about our relationship, Selina,” Bruce said after a long silence. “We can’t tell anyone the whole truth. Not even Holly was there for all of it, and she was there for the start. But somehow, lying is preferable to manipulating the truth. To erase fifteen months of our history, even among ourselves… Do you really think that we met at Johnny Viti’s wedding?”

Selina shrugged. “Yeah. I do.”

“ _Why?_ We weren’t complete strangers before that. Maybe we didn’t talk much that first night, or on the _Dolphin,_ but we certainly had conversations after that… in Bruzinsky's Theatre and those times we went up against Hugo Strange together. Can you really discount all those meetings?”

Selina scratched her eyebrow. “It’s not so much that I’ve _discounted_ them as it is… Look, you knew my real identity pretty early on, didn’t you?” He nodded. “For you, there was no difference between running into Catwoman and running into Selina Kyle because you always knew we were one in the same. Me, I didn’t know. You had to tell me after _ten years._ Batman and Bruce Wayne were two different people to me, and even after I knew you were the same person, I didn’t know about our Crime Alley encounter until even more recently. You were in disguise, and I wasn’t. Trying to make sense of this new timeline… it’s a lot, okay?”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s _not your fault_ that it’s a lot, and I don’t blame you for any of that. You didn’t have to tell me anything, not then and not now. I still can’t believe how things turned out half the time, so you don’t need to beg my forgiveness for not predicting the future that day in the East End.” She smiled thinking about it. “I would’ve been pretty shocked if that drifter _had_ turned around and told me that we were going to get married one day. Probably would have punched you out regardless.”

“You didn’t _punch me out._ ”

Selina raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t, but he was fun to tease. “ _Anyway…_ So yes, I consider Johnny Viti’s wedding our first meeting. It’s the first time _we_ met. An honest version of ourselves, at least, and it was the first time I was aware that we _were_ meeting.”

Bruce sighed. "I guess."

Selina pulled the covers up on her side of the bed and slid underneath them. “How generous of you.”

Bruce was silent as he turned out the lights and climbed into bed beside her. She might have thought they would end the night on that awkward note—not the first time they’d done that either, though it would be the first time in Wayne Manor—but Bruce broke his silence just as Selina was beginning to drift off to sleep.

“We’re hardly the most traditional couple,” he said softly. “Could it really surprise anyone that we’ve met each other for the first time a dozen times? Least of all ourselves. It’s just as true to say that we met at the Roman’s penthouse, whichever meeting we might mean, as it would be if we said we met in Crime Alley or on the _Dolphin._ ”

“So if anyone asks, we met at Johnny Viti’s wedding,” Selina said with a yawn.

He agreed with a soft grunt. “You asked me to dance.”

She laughed tiredly at the memory. They’d been _wild_ before Dick moved in and Bruce had gotten responsible. Before Selina sunk too far down into Gotham’s underworld. “I had only gone there to get the layout. Didn’t even have an invitation. I snuck in, and once they saw me dancing with you, everyone just assumed I was your date. Awful security for a mob wedding.”

“I didn’t bring a date.”

“Which was lucky for me.”

Bruce was quiet again, but Selina barely had time to wonder whether he’d fallen asleep before he said, “I should have taken you up on the offer.”

Her brow furrowed. “You did. We danced.”

“No…” He reached his hand out for her in the dark, landing on her deltoid. “When we were leaving, you asked me if I had plans for the rest of the evening. I faked a yawn and said it was too late. It was an excuse, I was going to change into my suit and come back. I should have gone with you instead.”

Selina grinned. “We ended up spending the evening together anyway.”

They had both broken into the Roman’s penthouse after the wedding. She had gone in first, and the safe was already cracked with all its riches laid out for the taking when Batman climbed in through the window she’d left open. They’d fought, of course. They couldn’t meet in costume without fighting back then. The noise they’d made had brought Falcone’s men into his office, and Catwoman might have come to an inglorious end right then and there if Batman hadn’t shielded her with his body.

 _Self-sacrificial fool,_ she thought fondly.

“Hm. We might have spent it more enjoyably than we did. I didn’t much enjoy being shot at, and I can’t imagine you were pleased to have your robbery interrupted.”

“I wasn’t. The Roman had a fortune hidden away in his safe, and it could have been all mine if not for you.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Selina. You’ll just have to settle for my fortune.”

She yawned again. “My jointure.”

Bruce snorted. “Between that and what you’ve saved up over the years, I’m sure you’ll be fine.” He turned over in bed, trying to find a new and equally comfortable position now that he had to share his bed with another human being, while Selina realized what would have to happen before she could access her jointure.

“No I won’t.”

Bruce’s eyes opened. “Hmm?”

“You’d be dead, Bruce. I wouldn’t be fine.”

She inched her way across the massive bed until she was laying against him, her head tucked underneath his chin, and he wrapped an arm around her. “I’m not planning on dying anytime soon,” he promised in a whisper, but that was the one thing Bruce couldn’t plan. Every night he put on his suit was another night he might not make it home.

This was a terrible idea. She shouldn’t have agreed, no matter how much she wanted it.

Selina had learned at a young age that nothing was permanent in this world. She’d been as young as Bruce had been, probably, both of them too clever and too damaged not to know that everything ended, even the things you took for granted ( _especially_ the things you took for granted, and in the most painful way). Yet they had chosen to start a relationship knowing that and to commit to that relationship even after everything Gotham and the whole entire multiverse had thrown at them.

They were so stupid.

Selina tightened her hold on Bruce until his breath hitched and she was sure he was awake. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you too, Selina.” He ran his hand down her back. “Get some sleep. Everything will seem better in the morning.”


End file.
